Within the context of same-gender relationships, this pervasive construct of the feminine victim assumes that the victim in the relationship is the “woman” or the passive and submissive member. Conversely, it assumes that the perpetrator is the “man” or the aggressive and dominating member. In same-gender relationships, or really any relationship, the presented gender identity of a victim or perpetrator may not coincide with normative expectations. These normative expectations drive the cultural impulse to make assumptions about individuals on the basis of their presented gender; these impressions are often misguided and do not inform any understanding of the abusive dynamics that are manifesting. Gendered assumptions based on cultural expectations have far-reaching consequences for those responding to or witnessing intimate partner violence. Among the many potential outcomes, gendered assumptions can undermine abuse between feminine partners and/or misidentify abuse between masculine partners.
A Queer Approach—Framing Trans Experiences in Intimate Partner Violence
It is evident that dominant forms of theorization in the field have not adequately captured the nuances of LGBTQ experiences with intimate partner violence. While emphasizing the psychological attributes, situational opportunities, and sociocultural explanations of gender to explain intimate partner violence may provide stronger explanations, turning to a postmodernist framework that emphasizes the power behind language may shed more light on the abusive dynamics experienced by trans victims. Through the critical examination of the power behind language, a more trans-inclusive approach to gender within criminological thought is possible. “Queering” gender in this framework highlights the power that arises through the use of language and discourse that make it a social reality. Gender and sexualities scholars Kath Browne and Catherine Nash explained that queering “can be any form of research positioned within conceptual frameworks that highlight the instability of taken-for-granted meanings and resulting power relations.”41 Through this approach, trans experiences can be examined through the meanings embedded within a genderist power structure that marginalizes their intimate partner violence victimization, shapes their experiences, and limits their help-seeking opportunities. Given that the overwhelming majority of intimate partner violence research and theorization has assumed cisgender gender status, it is hard to think of another concept that has been more taken for granted than the complexities among diverse gender identities.
Most feminist criminological study of intimate partner violence relied on an explanation of gender that was largely either sociocultural or socialized. As noted, these conceptualizations of gender held that the patriarchal power structure enabled intimate partner violence. Outside of intimate partner violence research, sociologists Candace West and Don Zimmerman would later expand the idea of gender as more than an individual attribute or role that was either “naturally” or structurally defined but that gender itself was accomplished or “done.”42 Through this lens, individuals “do” gender according to socially prescribed notions or definitions of what is ideally “masculine” or “feminine” behavior. Thus, gender arises through daily interaction and comes into reality as an outcome of these exchanges. As sociologist Kristin Anderson later added, this interactionist perspective shifted “our thinking from the question of how masculinity causes violence to the question of how violence causes masculinity.”43 This approach effectively framed previous findings in feminist intimate partner violence research that concluded male aggression against women as an action that represented their culturally defined superiority as masculine. Violence thus comes to represent an act of masculinity, one that reinforces or “does” hegemonic masculinity.
More recently, the concept of gender in intimate partner violence has expanded further through a postmodernist framework. Philosopher Michel Foucault explained that power, the ability to get others to do as you please, was rooted in hegemonic discourse.44 He proposed that the power behind legitimized language was the source of conflict in society that constructed dominant narratives and subordinate or oppositional discourses.45 For feminist scholars and critical criminologists applying this perspective to intimate partner violence, this meant not that power was simply embedded in preordained structural or social categories, but rather that ways of “knowing” were the root of power. Postmodernism, generally speaking, challenged the notion of concrete categories and proposed that identities were situational, variant, and fluid.46 Through this framework then, intimate partner violence is still a product of a patriarchal power structure that is also a consequence of structurally informed discourses that marginalize women and create distinct realities across race, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Patriarchy, among other systems of oppression, informs the use of violence in relationships regardless of one’s own gender identity. Patriarchal norms permeate all relationship types and normalize hierarchal dynamics and the use of violence between intimate partners.
Some postmodern feminists have since departed from the notion that “woman” and “man” are static identities. As gender theorist and philosopher Judith Butler questioned, “what is meant by woman?”47 Butler’s proposition was that woman, and therefore biological sex, was just as much a social construct as gender. Utilizing this perspective, gender is not “a singular act, but a representation and a ritual.”48 In this way, Butler located the concept of gender as performance; these acts or ways of being are culturally sustained and represent hegemonic idealization of heterosexual gender.
This approach to gender can be particularly useful for the inclusion of trans experiences in intimate partner violence research. It is by no means the only or best way to work toward a trans-inclusive body of intimate partner violence research, but it starts the process of expanding gender in a field that has overwhelmingly assumed the universality of cisgender experiences. Moving toward trans inclusion is challenging and often controversial when faced with essentialist arguments.
Even feminist scholars have been historically divided on what “transgender” means to the overall concept of gender. Many cisgender lesbian and radical feminists had traditionally opposed the notion of transgender identities as they saw women as oppressed largely as a result of society’s marginalization of “female” bodies. From their perspective, to transition from man to woman did not constitute a legitimate “woman,” one that had the lived experiences of a “natural female bodied” person.49 Conversely, those women who transitioned to men were viewed as “giving up” on the cause and shedding their subordinated identities as women to embody the privilege of a man. Because this version of feminism relied on a sisterhood of those born female, those who transitioned in a female representation could never be “real” women.50
These arguments have often played out on the public stage, including when Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie drew some criticism in early 2017 for what some feminists believed was a transphobic statement she made during an interview. While her literary work has been widely heralded as transformative for feminist thought, when asked on a British news network about trans women, Adichie said, “When people talk about, ‘Are trans women, women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women.” As a staunch advocate for LGBTQ rights, Adichie later apologized and clarified her statement, but nonetheless the discussion of transphobia and/or genderism within feminism was reignited: are transwomen “women” or are they separate—“transwomen”?
Some feminists have argued that transsexual identities, unlike some transgender identities, support the existing gender binary; they argue that in switching one’s physical sex from one to another, only two gendered outcomes are recognized.51 In many ways, the gender binary is so totalizing and compulsory that even some transgender identities are constructed within the dichotomy of “woman/man,” “feminine/masculine.” While some have seen flaws in trans inclusion, others have argued that transgender recognition challenged feminism to “move beyond identity politics and into a feminism that based itself on the politics of gender performativity, choice, personal power, and individualism.”52 Despite the fact that many feminists relied on a social constructionist argument for the dismantling of gender inequality, some were resistant to accept biological sex and the body as a similar social construct.
Some scholars argue that the
